Joseph and Mary can’t make it to Bethlehem, on Banksy’s Christmas card

Yesterday an image that is purportedly British street artist Banksy’s Christmas card this year started making the rounds on Twitter.

The artwork in question is, in many ways, a conventional Biblical landscape painting, which shows what are presumably the figures of Joseph and Mary — she astride a donkey — making their way toward Bethlehem, only to find their route blocked by the graffiti-covered Israeli West Bank Concrete Wall.

The Hebrews of Yore can be genetically & ancestrally found in the Palestinians of today. They simply speak Arabic, and now have a major component of Arab identity.

So today, in the name of supposedly protecting a political ideology that is essentially Militant Judaic Separatism and Racial Supremacy the ancestors of those same Biblical Hebrews of yore would be prevented from entering Bethlehem

But not only Joseph and Mary of the biblical tale would have problems today trying to get to Bethlehem.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Prof Richard Falk, is Jewish – and he has never been able to get to Bethlehem despite the fact that Israel is a state party to “The Convention On The Privileges And Immunities Of The United Nations”. Article VI provides that:

Experts performing missions for the United Nations shall be accorded such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions during the period of their missions, including the time spent on journeys in connection with their missions. In particular they shall be
accorded:
(a) Immunity from personal arrest or detention and from seizure of their personal baggage;

The image evokes a powerful sense of how the life of a Palestinian is affected – even shared religious wisdom (ie: The Christian story) cannot escape the powerful grips of racist Israeli government policy.

The town of Bethlehem (like other Palestinian towns and villages) is being choked by an 8-metre-high concrete wall. In the minds of Christians and non-Christians in Palestine and around the world, Bethlehem is also inexorably bound to the stories and traditions surrounding the birth of Jesus (which include themes of oppression and exclusion).

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To the left, a shepherd tends his sheep, while in the distant sky a cross-shaped star lights up the heavens over the imposing an illegal concrete wall.

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